“There is no question that high end audio is usually a labour of love for the designer, this being a given where technology and art meet. What kind of love is another question altogether: sometimes love is blind, sometimes it’s tough, and as often as not, simply perverse. I guess that’s what makes for the remarkable diversity we find in components with such an emotional content. It is perhaps useful to view this pair from Blue Circle Audio in this light…”

“I reviewed and ultimately acquired the Grado SR125 headphone almost two years ago (Smr 95), and have since used it in concert and session recordings for monitoring. The thing I’ve always liked about this phone is that it sounds more like speakers than any other I’ve heard in its timbral balance; other headphones tend to be rather bright and spitty by comparison…”

I first discovered these acoustic absorbers at the Montreal Festival du Son more than a year ago, as demonstrated by genial Yves Boudreau, about whom I have a brief anecdote: at this year’s show I ran into Yves for the third show in a row, his display in the main ballroom just over the way from ours for AIG Imagers, recordings, etc. He greeted me warmly, saying, “Ah, Mr. Marshall, how are you?” My reply was, “Fine, but please call me Andrew…”